The Berlin Apartment is certainly a poignant game, offering an engaging and insightful examination of the human experience, all within the walls of a single apartment in a story told across a century. While the overall package is both charming and entertaining, making for an enjoyable evening’s cosy entertainment, it’s hard to overlook certain elements that many players will undoubtedly find to be a tad tedious.
Developed by indie studio btf, The Berlin Apartment is a first-person narrative adventure. Dilara and her father, Malik, are at the heart of the story. Malik is a modern day handyman, tasked with renovating an apartment in, you guessed it, Berlin. Offering a helping hand to her father, Dilara uncovers various relics which reveal four unique stories detailing the lives of four of the apartment’s previous residents set across different decades.
What I struggle to fault is The Berlin Apartment’s narrative. It’s most definitely the game’s greatest strength and yet, so too is it the aspect I’m most unwilling to talk about. In a title that revolves around its storytelling, it would be a disservice to the game if I put all of The Berlin Apartment’s cards on the table. You’ll visit four key periods in your playthrough, something even the game’s trailers have made clear. There are tales pertaining to both WWI and WWII, with others taking players to the 1960s and 1980s.
Each story examines a certain struggle, whether that be loneliness, persecution, guilt, or a yearning for something more, and all of this ties in very closely with Germany’s unique history. The Berlin Apartment offers a considered perspective on the lives of ordinary people that are perhaps left out of the history book during extraordinary times. There’s a sense of honouring these people, and I was wholly gripped by The Berlin Apartment from that perspective. It was incredibly moving in parts and engaging from a narrative standpoint.
But when it comes to how engaging The Berlin Apartment is in terms of its gameplay, it’s a much murkier result. It isn’t difficult for me to praise the game’s overall vision. Each of the aforementioned stories will see the apartment transform, naturally, but so too does entering a new tale evolve the gameplay. Each segment of The Berlin Apartment has its own unique mechanics, and that certainly aids in attempting to keep things fresh. I appreciated the strive from developers to create something that feels wholly different as you embark on each new instalment, with the familiar locale of the apartment providing the throughline.
The problem is that within half of the game’s tales, there’s an element that proves to be hugely tedious. In the first story, the protagonist spends much of the episode monologuing while you can’t move, or reading letters. After a while, you can’t help but just want to move in some way, even if that’s just to walk around the apartment during such lengthy moments of dialogue. In a late stage tale, you’ll visit a writer with a large chunk of this segment tasking the player with button mashing to emulate said writer typing, with the writer narrating what’s being written as you continue to button mash.
I wouldn’t say such tedium made The Berlin Apartment any less worth experiencing – it’s definitely a pleasant cosy experience I’d recommend – but I can’t help but wonder how elevated the entire experience might be if the gameplay had a modicum more complexity. Yes, a game like The Berlin Apartment that’s driven by its narrative doesn’t require an intense level of complexity but it’s nice to feel that you have some meaningful involvement beyond mashing a button. There are most definitely stronger areas where that’s the case. Searching the apartment for items to pack in one tale, for example, was engaging, as was finding items to decorate for Christmas in another.
The Berlin Apartment does, as I said, undoubtedly offer an engaging narrative, even if you will have to endure several half-baked gameplay elements. It’s a beautifully considered look into the human experience, offering players a concept that is creative and engaging, even if it might not quite unlock its full potential. At the end of the day, the world needs more empathy and The Berlin Apartment, I feel, succeeds in promoting that, and that fact alone should be reason enough to give it a go.
Pros: Heartfelt story, beautifully presented, some fun gameplay elements
Cons: Repetitive and tedious in parts
For fans of: Life is Strange, Season: A Letter to the Future, Paper Trail, Venba, Unpacking
7/10: Very Good
The Berlin Apartment launches on 17 November on PC (version tested via Xbox ROG Ally X), Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.
